Parents beliefs and medical treatment of children.

A child is sick and going to die, the doctors prescribe medicine that will save the childs life but because of the parents beliefs they won't allow it.

Which side should the law be on?

You have a responsiblity to care for your child. To raise it in a healthy manner. You do not have the right to do things which cause the child harm or death.

Refusal of life saving medicine should result in the child permantly being taken away and a stiff jail sentence for both parents.

That's a tough poll.

On one side, I thought that it would be murder. But then, I also pictured a family gathered in prayer, crying and realizing that life isn't always fair and that their beliefs wouldn't even allow the parents to be saved if they got sick. To them, the medicine is not an option they would take... but they don't enjoy losing their child either.
I imagine most people wouldn't have the guts to actually decline treatment.

Anyway, I'd like to leave it to whoever had custody of the child. I know it would be like murder but... we get into some really troublesome issues when we try to force people to change. We have to consider that they've given plenty of thought to losing their child and still don't want to change - no matter how much it hurts.

Then my mind goes back to murder.

I don't really know. No, not really. I suppose the option I picked. Not sure. Tough poll.

Gee following that retarded logic then I guess it really is ok for Islamic nuts to stone a girl to death.

Afterall her family just gathered in prayer, crying and realizing that life isn't always fair and she had to be killed because her religion dictated it.

By golly we've no right to force them to change!

Saying "even if the child will die" biases the poll.

Parents wouldn't seek a treatment guaranteed to cause their child to die. That's just someone else imposing their own assessment of the treatment in question.

What about those parents who starved their child to death on a vegan diet because their beliefs didn't let them provide animal products?

There are plenty of idiots who do (or try to do) that every year.

Refusing treatment because your religion says you should pray is a "treatment" guaranteed to cause a child to die.

Prayer isn't a treatment.

Oh, you ain't seen Christian Scientists.

What age are we talking here?
I recall an incident here recently with a 16 year old facing a battery of radioactive action. He wanted to go to Mexico.

It's a case by case, you can't just give an either or.

Not tough at all. When the life of the child is on the line, the beliefs of the parent have all the relevance of last week's Powerball numbers on this week's drawing.

Yep.

I've seen alternative medicine work wonders where conventional medicine failed with my own two eyes.

I'm glad we agree.

Now tell that to the idiot parents who think it is.

Christian Scientists think so.

They think disease is an illusion from the devil, like an injury inflicted in the Matrix, and it can be prayed away.

I don't think he means a 16 year old in the poll. A 16 year old can understand what is going on.

I think the definition of 'child' needs adjustment, for starters. A teenager should have more autonomy than a newborn, but legally they're often treated just the same. Hell, if teenagers were given more autonomy, not just medically and legally but in general, they'd probably act more like young adults than babies.

Yeah, but what a grey world that'd be.

In most cases, I'd say that refusing medical treatment is the same as child neglect. If a child needs an appendectomy, or surgery to repair damage from an accident, there's no excuse for denying that treatment, and refusing it should be viewed the same way as starving the child or leaving him locked in a hot car.

If it's a situation where there's a choice between, on the one hand, an extremely painful treatment that has only a 20 percent chance of prolonging the child's life by three or four years, and on the other hand allowing the child to die in six months without the painful treatment, the situation becomes murkier.

As opposed to a world you have now where you can drive and have sex at sixteen, join the army at 18 and drink at 21?

Well, there's gotta be a happy medium between that hypocrisy, and Prufrock's world, where 17 year olds would be little Alex Keatons.

Looking at the second part of your post though, what if the parents believe that by a treatment that may extend a childs life by a few years, they will be risking their eternal soul?

Protecting kids from that would kinda have to force the government to recognize some types of religion are mental illness, and they ain't got the balls for that.

Better some kids should die, than they lose votes form their "base".

That's fair.

There's a big difference between seeking a medical repair for an injury or infection like a broken bone or an infected appendix, and seeking a medical treatment for something like cancer, where the possible effects of the treatment might be more dire and crippling than the affliction, and might not work.

What if the parents believe that if they baptize their child and then promptly bash its brains out with a rock, it'll go straight to Jesus?

Parents' rights should almost always trump the dead hand of government.

Besides, the faster we weed the stupid genes out of the gene pool, the better off society becomes. Let the reality-impaired kill themselves off. Fewer of 'em each generation would not be a bad thing.

Darwin rulz!!!!!!1!!

Babylon 5 did what I consider a mediocre episode about this exact question, called
"Believers" .

Does anybody who saw this show think that the parents - who refused surgery for their kid based upon their religious belief although surgery would have probably saved his life - were correct?

I assume we'll all agree that murdering the kid after the fact was wrong.

I disapprove of the poll options. Going against what the parents want is not "forcing the child" to recieve the treatment.

I tend to agree, for once.

Fuck their beliefs. Up the ass with a rusty razor blade.

Well I wouldn't have gone for option one on the poll, but option two doesn't really capture my true feelings on the subject, mainly because of the mention of forcing the child to receive medicine.

If the child doesn't have sufficient understanding of the issues then I believe, if the treatment is life saving, the parents should be overridden. However if the child has sufficient understanding then the child's feelings and beliefs should not be overridden.

As a parent I think that you are all and all out fucking stupid if you are willing to sacrifice the health of your child because of your "beliefs". It's YOUR CHILD. You CREATED this wonderful being and are given the chance to nurture, love, raise, reprimand, guide, discipline, and see that they grow into a fine person. Anyone that would willingly watch their child die or fuck up that chance because of a mere "belief" is off their rocker, as far as I'm concerned.

I completely agree with what RJHJ said about the child being removed from the parents and a stiff jail sentence for the morons that ever should have bred in the first place.